Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

The Delay of the
Deity
wished might wreak vengeance upon them for the
wrong they had done to Aesop.
tion came one ladmon, a man in no way
In the third genera
related to
Aesop, but a descendant of those who had bought
him in Samos; and to this man, having in some way
made satisfaction (for the wrong done to Aesop), the
Delphians were released from their calamities.
After that date also, they say. the punishment of
temple- robbery was transferred to Nauplia from
Hyampeia. Those who are great admirers of Alex
ander, of which number we also are, do not commend
him for destroying the city of the Branchidae and
putting them all to death, without distinction of age
or sex, because their forefathers had betrayed the
temple at Miletus. Agathocles, too, the usurper of
Syracuse, mockingly told the Corcyreans,
in answer
to the question why he had laid waste their island,
That it most assuredly was because their fathers had
kindly received Ulysses. To the people of Ithaca he
likewise replied when they expostulated with him be
cause his soldiers carried off their sheep, Your king
also came to us and even blinded the shepherd. And
is not Apollo even more unreasonable if he is destroy
ing the present generation of Pheneatae by blocking
up the barathrum and inundating their entire terri
tory, because a thousand years ago, as they say, Hercu
les carried off the prophetic tripod and took it to Pheneus?
or when he foretold to the Sybarites a release
from their ills, whenever they had appeased the
anger of the Leucadian Hera, by a
185
demolition three